Ikea

Ikea is a Swedish-founded, Netherlands-based multinational corporation that pioneered the idea of selling affordable, flatpack furniture. The company has 389 stores worldwide, does $45.1 billion in retail sales annually, and introduces around 2,500 new products to customers each year. Faced with competition from online retail giants, like Amazon, and leaner furniture upstarts, such as Floyd, Ikea has embraced new technologies. It built an AR app so customers can see what furniture will look like in the home. It has released a handful of Internet of Things-connected products that hint at what the smart home of the future might look and feel like. Ikea has also started to think like a tech company. It recently collaborated with the British designer Tom Dixon and Royal College of Art students to develop an open-source sofa frame that can accommodate clip-on accessories from Ikea or elsewhere--furniture as platform. In 2017, it bought the online labor marketplace TaskRabbit, likely to make it easier for customers to ship and assemble furniture. Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad died in January 2018 at the age of 91.